Last Spring Ashore
by Elli Cler
Summary: A nice day in spring before the beginning of ST:TMP. Uhura is thinking of her life, her friends and of Scotty.


**A/N:** English is very much not my native language, so I heartily apologize for all the mistakes I've made.

Lieutenant Commander Uhura knows a hell of a lot of languages (and has learned a few more during the last two years earth-bound). That is why she wouldn't stand to have a universal translator installed under her skin like so much a painless vaccine of Chris Chapel's. It was all well and good with the old metallic tubes for the away teams and the subroutines available from her computer station, but the new requirements to the starship's crew (including the communications officer) are simply inane. How can they be so incredibly stupid to design the UT so that you won't be able to hear the original speech or even be conscious of what is the language spoken! (Uhura mentally cringes: 'Lieutenant Commander Star Freedom' sounds too poetic even for her.) And to think that the new translator was largely based on the material that the Enterprise had gathered during their last five years of space exploration. Uhura knows for certain that the ship's linguists were doing their best (which is pretty good by any standards), but they were just not experienced enough in the realities of the deep space and first contact missions. Which sounds rather paradoxical, but the fact is the majority of the Enterprise's crew lived as safe as in God's pocket. Only those who got (privileged, Uhura thinks) to work in the away teams regularly, or on a bridge position, can truly understand those things. Which brings her to the original problem: Scotty most certainly would understand it, and she hopes he would be amenable to try and change something about the situation.

She feels a little guilty that she's going to discuss business with him. This was supposed to be a relaxing walk under the bottomless blue sky (oh, the sentimental springtime). They were lucky so far that the rain has stopped; the skies were clearing, and she decided to walk from the Academy on foot. It was great to have a break from the children, however much she likes teaching. And Scotty had to work hard to get the afternoon off: the refitting of the Enterprise has come to its climax stage. Oh well, Uhura shrugs not without fondness, he would be talking about his ship half the time anyway, on duty or off. She doesn't mind anymore, she got used to Scotty's mannerisms so much.

Strange, she thinks, that Scotty's (certainly excessive) gallantry does not in any way repulse her, unlike Hikaru Sulu's blatant bravadoes. They spent a few rather unpleasant months (the first year into their mission) with Uhura trying to break it to Sulu that she won't let him court her. He had been taken with her for a long while, but when he finally let go of it, they became good friends. Well, all of the bridge crew, senior officers especially, became friends during those years. She often wondered whether this was only a natural consequence of so much time well spent together, and risking their lifes together time and again, and working together to save them, or if they were indeed meant (destined?) to make up (forge) an unbreakable team (family) once they had met (found) each other.

She cuts away the more dramatic line of thought and doesn't allow herself to dwell on what has passed between the captain and his two closest friends at the end of the mission, which has scattered them all over the Federation. It is only Jim (he is an admiral now, she has to remind herself) that stayed in active service, but he has grown so distant, calm, impenetrable, so... blank, that's an apt but frightening word. He threw himself into his new duties, into the marriage (he had known Ms. Ciani barely for a few weeks, and they held a ceremony very soon after all the fuss about the Enterprise's safe return had calmed down), and he shows all intentions of letting the Enterprise be commanded by another man. From the two others, they had barely heard a word. Uhura sighs. They had tried everything they could, talked between themselves, and talked to the captain, and sent messages; and nothing worked. Then everyone has found some highly interesting work to do to keep them occupied here on Earth, but for all the good it did... No, Uhura is happy that in a few months they're leaving together to see the stars again; it doesn't matter how much she loves these sunny days on Earth, the space is her true place. However, it seems that only a half of the original bridge crew will return to their ship. (Isn't it strange that she perfectly knows for how many years different people had served aboard the Enterprise, and still she can't help but call it 'ours'?) Scotty says that the new captain (the fact that still no one can properly digest), William Decker, is a 'fine lad'. She cannot bring herself to ask who is going to serve as the science officer, God bless Scotty for keeping it silent. Now, tears are no help in sorrow, she'll think of spring and hope and gallant Scotty, who is probably waiting for her with one or two irises, her favorites.

The thing is that Scotty is natural and unpretentious in all he does, and (once surprisingly) easy to be with, and as reliable as the good old Earth, while Sulu's hobbies are changing too quickly even for his own good. Lately he has taken up hiking. The last she saw of him a few weeks ago, they were doing paired orienteering with Pasha Chekov, on whom Sulu was proving to be an unhealthy influence. The boy (God, she still thinks of him as a youth!) should do more boxing or something; security chief is a tough job. And there's no other woman but her to take care of him, for shame. Uhura notes that there are definitely more couples on the streets than even half a month ago: the spring is taking over the city.

An opening phrase suddenly comes into her mind: "'Transporter' and 'translator' sound alike and will both work equally reliably", and she can just hear Scotty's reproachful "Nae, lass, leave it ter Doctor McCoy ter insult our transporters" in reply. She can hear him intoning the line even more clearly than the usual background noises of people hurrying on their business and birds' twittering from god knows where and all the lovely ramble of an early afternoon in Frisco. That's how Jim Kirk has always called the city, he'd picked it up in some ancient book and persisted in calling the Headquarters 'Frisco bosses' after their visit to Sigma Iotia II for quite some time. The whole bridge was climbing the wall until he at last let it drop.

Uhura breathes in the cool air and checks her hair in the window of an aircar parked near the road, and she thinks they all get together too rarely. It has been entirely too long since she's seen Scotty, for one thing. There he stands, his back to her, twitching nervously; he came too early again.

"Scotty!" She runs the last few steps and smiles and plants a kiss on his cheek, and he is finally not so awkward about it.

"Easy, lass," Scotty grumbles, but there is an easily discernible smile in his voice; and they take off together down the rain-washed street, arm in arm, and the sun reflects in their eyes and in the wet pavement.

**A/N:** I wrote this story a really long time ago, when I first saw the opportunity of shipping Uhura/Scotty. Since then it has become my secondary OTP for the show, and I still like this story very much; it describes so well how I feel about the pairing. Unfortunately, there aren't too many well-written Scotty/Uhura fics, so I thought: why the hell not? And put this one in here.


End file.
